The Facility
by JinnySkeans
Summary: When an old friend commits suicide during his stay at a psychiatric treatment facility, Sasuke infiltrates as a patient to find out what went wrong. But there are more secrets in the Restricted Ward than he's ready to hear. It's enough to drive you crazy. AU
1. Chapter 1

On the outside, there was nothing intimidating about Oto Psychiatric Facility. That was Sasuke's first thought when the van pulled up to the building. He'd been expecting some ancient castle with dungeons, maybe a crocodile-filled moat on the outside. Something out of a horror movie.

Instead, from the outside, OPF looked clean and modern. The sun shined bright against the windows and the cream-colored paint job was fresh and new. The grass was well-watered and the foliage looked healthy and beautiful. The only thing even slightly off-putting about OPF was its location: smack dab in the middle of nowhere, and miles away from civilization.

Sasuke kept his dark eyes clear as he took in the sights for the first time. He knew better than anyone how a pretty exterior could hide something dark and frightening. And he wasn't here for no reason.

"Here you are, Mr. Uchiha," said the driver as he pulled into a parking space. "Oto Psychiatric Facility. Looks nice, doesn't it?"

Sasuke said nothing in response as he unbuckled his seatbelt, shouldered his backpack, and got out of the van, followed quickly by his handlers.

They headed up the long walkway to the double doors in front. Sasuke's strides were slow and confident, but he never relaxed his guard; no matter how _nice_ OPF looked from the outside, he knew that inside lay a very dark, very ugly secret.

And he was going to find out what it was.

…

_Sasuke felt Itachi's hand on his shoulder, a silent "I'm with you" that would have made tears catch in his throat if he was a different man. Instead, his jaw tightened as he stared at the shallow grave with the simple headstone, fresh as the spring rain._

_"The coroner's report came back," Itachi said softly, as the two brothers stood before Juugo's grave._

_Sasuke didn't need to ask, but he did anyway. "Yeah?"_

_"Yeah. They confirmed it was a suicide."_

_There hadn't been a doubt in Sasuke's mind before this. Juugo, who'd spent six months in a psychiatric treatment facility, had been found with a note, hanging in his closet by a belt. With his brother a captain in the Konoha Police Unit, Sasuke knew that until a coroner filed a report and a medical examination was performed, they couldn't determine an official cause of death, usually for several weeks. But this one? This one was pretty clear cut._

_"I'm sorry, little brother. I know he was a good friend."_

_There was a rumble of thunder overhead, but Sasuke didn't move. Still dressed in a black suit and tie from the burial, it felt like his legs had grown roots and were planted in the earth. All he could focus on was the unremarkable gravestone and Juugo's name emblazoned across it._

_"It was murder," Sasuke heard himself say._

_It was an assertion that contradicted logic, science, and truth, but Sasuke believed it from the bottom of his heart. He knew Juugo. He'd known what a gentle, caring person he was, despite his darker side. He'd known that no matter how bad things had gotten for him, there was no way he would be driven to something like this._

_"Sasuke," said Itachi consolingly, "I know you don't want to believe it, but…"_

_"I know what they believe," he rebuked shortly, rounding on his older brother, the only family he had left in the world. "What do you believe?"_

_Itachi hesitated, then sighed, his hand falling away from Sasuke's shoulder and sliding into his pocket instead. The wind tugged at his long ponytail as he turned his gaze skyward._

_"I believe what you do," he admitted. "I believe that something happened at the facility he was staying at. But what we believe is worth nothing unless we can prove it."_

_"What if we can prove it?" Sasuke demanded._

_There would be time to mourn Juugo later, after Sasuke's anger had cooled. It had always been his nature to act first in the interests of justice, then allow his personal feelings to interfere after the problem was resolved. Now, he was happening upon an idea, and it threatened to consume him._

_Itachi sighed again. "A full inquiry was launched into the incident," he intoned, as if reading from a report. "Investigators spoke with the head psychiatrists as well as staff, even other patients. All of them said the same thing. Juugo's mental state deteriorated, he became increasingly moody and withdrawn, and then he hung himself. That's all we know."_

_"But you don't buy it," Sasuke said aggressively, recognizing his brother's reluctance to discuss what was happening._

_"From what I know of Juugo, if it was suicide, then something must have happened to drive him to it, something out of the norm. He was committed to OPF on a referral from Dr. Yakushi at Konoha General, to treat him for mood swings consistent with bipolar disorder. People suffering from untreated bipolar disorder are prone to fits of mania and depression, can act with hostility or spontaneity...and there are several who commit suicide, yes. But the most suspicious aspect of this, is why he was committed in the first place."_

_Sasuke frowned, listening hard, even as the first droplets of rain began to fall in the cemetery. He didn't know much about psychiatry, but now that Itachi mentioned it, something didn't wash._

_"Patients aren't often committed, merely for being diagnosed with a psychological disorder," Itachi went on. "There are many people who live normal lives when treated, others who see a counselor for therapy…very rarely is a man placed into an institution without having committed a crime."_

_"So why didn't anybody question it?" Sasuke pressed. "If Juugo went to that Yakushi guy for therapy, why didn't anybody question why he was sent right to an institution?"_

_"Because Juugo was raised in an orphanage. Then shuttled around from foster home to foster home. He was one of the at-risk kids, the kind that slip through the cracks. If something suspicious were to occur, no one would be around to ask why."_

_"You've clearly thought about this before, Itachi. So come out with it. What do you think's going on?"_

_"Sasuke all I have right now is a theory, and mere conjecture isn't going to stop anything. It isn't going to help those kids."_

_"But…"_

_"But ever since Dr. Yakushi arrived at Konoha General, there has been a surprising increase in the number of kids dispatched to mental institutions…namely the facility in Oto, where Juugo was receiving treatment. Again, most of these kids are like Juugo. Orphans, foster kids, children from broken homes or neglectful parents…"_

_"Kids society wouldn't miss," Sasuke finished bitterly, thinking how both he and his brother would fit into a category like that, how Juugo had, too. "But why do you think he's doing it, if it's true? Why do you think he's sending all these kids away? What's his purpose?"_

_"That's the rub," Itachi murmured thoughtfully. "I've spoken to a few of the other detectives on the force about my suspicions, but no one can guess as to why he's doing this. Some think it an act of kindness: he's taking troubled children away from their environments to give them treatment. But many of these children don't seem to be affected by legitimately debilitating psychological disorders that would warrant such aggressive treatment."_

_"So get a warrant! Search the place, find out what's going on!"_

_"We'd need probable cause to obtain a warrant," Itachi replied patiently._

_"And Juugo's death wasn't enough?!"_

_"I told you already. It was ruled a suicide, and many witnesses corroborated that. Suicides in a psych ward are not unheard of."_

_"So how do you get probable cause, then?" Sasuke demanded, entirely focused on bringing what happened to Juugo into the light. His hands clenched into fists. "What do we need to do, to get someone to take a look at that place?"_

_Itachi looked around to make sure no one was listening, but a sparse, overgrown cemetery in the middle of a storm wasn't often populated with eavesdroppers._

_"Our best bet," he said quietly, "would be an infiltration."_

_"Infiltration?"_

_"Yes. To have an agent of ours, of sound mind, to pose as a patient in the ward and gather information from the inside. I've discussed this with my superiors, but the problem is that OPF is a teenage facility. Most of the agents in our department could never pass for a teenager."_

_The answer was so obvious, it was unbelievable. Renewed with this fresh purpose, Sasuke snapped back, "Then I'll do it. I'm 17. I can get you that information."_

_Itachi shook his head. "Out of the question. You're not a trained field agent, Sasuke. You're in high school."_

_"I already have enough credits to graduate," Sasuke retorted. "This is more important. I can handle this. Let me do it."_

_"I realize you want to help your friend, but…"_

_"But nothing. You said it yourself, our best bet is an infiltration, and everyone else is too old. But I'm not! Let me do it and I'll give you the evidence you need."_

_"It could be dangerous, Sasuke!" Itachi argued, shaking his little brother's shoulders. "How far are you willing to go to bring your poor friend justice?"_

…

Sasuke thought back to their conversation and felt his resolve strengthen, even as the double doors swung open automatically to admit him. He, the driver, and two handlers swept inside, and he was instantly struck by the sterile smell of a hospital.

The walls were so white, it almost hurt to look at them. There was a long hallway with several closed doors on every side, and a marble receptionists' desk where he was led to first.

A woman with long black hair and a hard-looking face sat behind the counter, a sickeningly sweet smile twisting thin lips and baring pointed teeth. A glossy silver nameplate read: KIN TSUCHI, RECEPTIONIST, and she stuck her hand out towards him.

"Hello, Mr. Uchiha," she said, her voice so saccharine he almost gagged. "My name is Miss Tsuchi. Welcome to Oto Psychiatric Facility! We're delighted to have you."

He ignored her handshake completely, just staring at her with a bored expression – he and Itachi agreed that when given a fake ailment, it should be social withdrawal with violent tendencies, since that wasn't too far away from Sasuke's moody personality – and eventually she dropped her hand, but not her smile. Instead, she shoved a clipboard at him with a pen attached to it by a chain.

"Please sign in here, and our staff will take you to your room and get you situated," said Miss Tsuchi.

Irritated with how closely he was being watched, both by the receptionist and the three men who'd escorted him here from Konoha, Sasuke scribbled his name on the sign-in sheet and shoved it back at her.

"Thank you very much," Miss Tsuchi intoned. "Dosu, Zaku, please escort Mr. Uchiha to his room on the seventh floor and see that he's made comfortable," she added, to the silent handlers. "It's been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Uchiha. I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay!"

_Dosu, Zaku, Kin Tsuchi,_ thought Sasuke, mentally cataloguing the staff members he'd met so far. _Two handlers and a receptionist._

Itachi had caved to his request to be the mole in the psych ward, but his instructions were explicitly clear. He was to tell _no one_ of his mission no matter what, and he was to report all details, however minor, to his brother at family visits. The first was scheduled two weeks from now.

Two weeks he would spend with no contact with the outside world, trying to dig up information on anything suspicious taking place here at Oto Psychiatric Facility. Besides the simpering, fake attitude of the receptionist and the slightly pushy way Dosu and Zaku were handling him, there was nothing overtly suspicious so far. But he'd only been here for two minutes.

Two weeks was starting to look like an awfully long time.

_I'll meet with Itachi at the family visit,_ he thought, eyes taking in the sight of an empty hallway as Zaku pressed his security key into the elevator to open it. _And tell him what I know. If I need more time, I'll stay another two weeks. But if I've got enough, I can have him withdraw me the hell out of here and we'll get the search warrant he needs._

"Quiet one, aren't you, pretty boy?" snickered Zaku, once the elevator doors shut with all of them inside.

His nerves prickled, but he didn't say anything in response. He doubted he could do much investigating if he was put in lockdown for kicking a handler's ass.

"It's _always_ the quiet ones," added Dosu, the larger of the two, and they both laughed. Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Here's what's gonna happen now," said Zaku, throwing his arm lazily across Sasuke's shoulders like they were best friends, and gambling that Sasuke wouldn't tear it off. "You're gonna change outta them street clothes and we're takin' you to your room. Know where you're staying? With Uzumaki. Most _annoying_ kid in the ward!"

_Not half as annoying as you,_ Sasuke thought dryly, his jaw clenching.

The elevator carried them up to the fourth floor, marked 'Restricted Ward.'

"Restricted?" he murmured, frowning. _That doesn't sound good._

"Scared?" sneered Dosu. "You should be. Pretty boy like you's bound to snap, once you see all the crazies inside _there._"

"You know shit about me," Sasuke ground out, unable to control his temper. If this was how every staff member acted, he doubted he'd be able to keep from punching them all in the mouth.

"I know all I gotta know about you, kid," laughed Zaku. "We read your case file."

_So much for client confidentiality, if they're letting thugs like these two assholes read patient files,_ thought Sasuke, his brain frantically trying to keep up with all the information they were pouring out for him.

"Sasuke Uchiha, age 17," recited Dosu as the doors swung open. He shoved him in between his shoulderblades, pushing him forward into the Restricted Ward hallway. "Height, 6'2". Weight, 175 pounds. Parents killed in a gangfight ten years ago. Legal guardian: older brother Itachi, a cop back in Konoha."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed.

"Committed to our fair facility by Dr. Yakushi, after your own brother turned you in for getting high and crashing his car."

(It had been easy to fake the police report with his brother in the police department; he'd even had Sasuke booked and fingerprinted to legitimize the story.)

"See?" Zaku sneered. "Even your own brother thinks you're crazy. You'll fit right in here, pretty boy." He shoved him forward, and Sasuke fought to control his anger. It wouldn't do to get into a fistfight his first day here. No, his goal was to fly under the radar, watch everything from a distance, report everything to Itachi on Family Day, find out what exactly was going on here at OPF, and get the hell out.

Finding out what happened to Juugo was more important than decking a couple of morons in the face for shooting their mouths off at him. Remembering his purpose for being here, he let his lip curl into a scowl but he said nothing in response as Zaku and Dosu pushed him down the hallway into a room in the corner.

"Look alive, Uzumaki," sneered Zaku, and when Sasuke entered his new room, he found a boy laying on one of the two flimsy hospital cots with his arms tucked behind his head, staring at the whitewashed ceiling. "Got you a new roommate. Here's hoping this one doesn't off himself in the closet, like the last one."

Sasuke's eyes widened a fraction, but he forced his expression to remain neutral. _It was here?_ He thought, shocked. _This was where Juugo…_

"Put these on," Dosu added, shoving a set of clothes at Sasuke. "So we can tell you apart as a fucking nutcase same as the rest of these nutcases. Then get to know your new roomie. He's such a pain in the ass, the last guy here hung himself right there in that closet."

Misinterpreting the way Sasuke shook with anger with fear, he and Zaku laughed and slammed the door shut, locking it on their way out.

"You get used to 'em," the blonde boy said hesitantly.

Sasuke looked around at him and saw that the boy didn't _look_ crazy. He was about the same age as Sasuke, blonde and blue-eyed with whisker marks on his cheeks. He was dressed in what Sasuke assumed was the standard-issue attire for patients at the facility, in gray pants and a black T-shirt, and he looked pale, like he hadn't seen the sun in awhile.

"We haven't had new blood around here in awhile," the boy continued, sounding almost hopeful as he sat up in his bed and swung his legs over the side. "Not since Ino came in last October. Now we got you, and I hear another girl's just been referred here to RW, so that should be good."

"RW?" Sasuke asked, his eyes narrowing.

"Yeah. The Restricted Ward." The boy grinned a little ironically. "That's where they put all us _real_ psychopaths. Or that's what they tell us, at least. Since, you know. We're not really crazy. I'm Naruto, by the way. Naruto Uzumaki. What're you in for?"

Naruto looked like he might be irritating, and Sasuke bit back the knee-jerk urge to snap, "None of your damn business." Instead, he realized that someone like Naruto, who'd been in this so-called Restricted Ward for awhile, might be a good source of information, and that it might be in his best interest to befriend him.

"I got anger problems," he mumbled, and it wasn't quite a lie. "You?"

"Ah, they say I'm bipolar," replied Naruto with an enormous smile, like it was all a big joke. "Kind of lame, compared to 'anger problems.' Like how angry could you have gotten, to wind up here with the rest of us?"

"Pretty angry."

"What's your name, man?"

"Sasuke."

"Well I hope you work out a lot better than my last roommate did," Naruto said, with a miserable glance at the closet Zaku and Dosu had referred to.

"What happened to him?" Sasuke asked; as if he didn't already know.

"It got to be too much for him," Naruto replied sadly. "All this. He…he hung himself last week. I was the one who found him."

"What got to be too much for him?" Sasuke pressed, hoping he didn't sound overeager.

"You'll see. But if I were you, I'd change into your clothes. They're taking us down to dinner in a few minutes and if you're out of uniform…well…let's just say you don't want to do anything to piss off Orochimaru or Kabuto."

Sasuke opened his mouth to ask why not, but at that moment, a series of bells went off in the hallway outside their room. Frowning, he realized Naruto wasn't kidding, and he stepped inside the small bathroom beside the closet to change.

The mirror was coated in plastic, distorting his reflection somewhat as he peeled off his leather jacket and blue T-shirt and kicked off his jeans. Everything here seemed to be baby-proofed, like they were worried about the patients hurting themselves.

_Makes sense,_ he thought, tugging the black T-shirt over his head. _A lot of these kids are at risk for suicide. Just like Juugo._

"Hurry up in there, man!" Naruto called. "They're gonna unlock the doors in a second and you _don't_ wanna be late to dinner!"

Sasuke grimaced and emerged from the bathroom, leaving his regular clothes folded on the back of the toilet for later. Naruto was waiting for him just as their bedroom door automatically unlocked itself and swung forward to release them.

_They keep the kids caged up here like animals,_ he thought, frowning in disgust as he and Naruto filed out into the hallway with the others in the Restricted Ward. There didn't seem to be too many people in this section of the facility; there was a tall, pale boy who looked a lot like him shuffling down the corridor, next to a tall, extremely thin girl with stringy blonde hair. Another girl, with dark hair and long bangs that covered her eyes, hung back behind them, never making eye contact with anyone.

"Not many of us in the Restricted Ward," Naruto murmured quietly as they all headed down the stairs together, herded like cattle by Zaku, Dosu, and a few of the other handlers. "Most of the other kids are downstairs. Lot nicer digs down there."

_Why are we up here, then? What differentiates a regular patient from one in the Restricted Ward?_

"It's weird, getting two newcomers in the same week," Naruto added, keeping his voice down. "I guess maybe they want three guys and three girls, keep it even in RW. I hope the new girl's a cutie at least. Ino and Hinata are all right, but Ino never eats and Hinata never talks to anybody, she's always up in her room."

_This is a psych ward, not a pick-up scene,_ Sasuke thought in irritation, rolling his eyes.

"They don't let us talk to the other patients, they keep us all together," Naruto went on, while Sasuke devoured every last scrap of information with a straight face. "Me and Sai…he's really autistic, everything he says is ass-backwards. Hinata's got social anxiety, she can't handle talking to people, and Ino's a bulimic."

"None of those disorders seem severe enough to land you all here," Sasuke said, his eyes narrowing as the situation became even more suspicious. Autism, bulimia, discomfort with people, even bipolar disorder…all of them seemed easily treatable outside a psychiatric facility. Why did they need to come here? What was the purpose of this special treatment?

Naruto opened his mouth to comment on Sasuke's remark, but they were stopped by Zaku and Dosu swooping in to interrupt them.

"Eyes down and mouth shut, pretty boy," sneered Zaku.

_The SECOND I get out of here,_ Sasuke thought venomously, _I'm gonna punch you right in the fucking mouth, you little shit._

But his objective was to remain passive. Unobtrusive. Virtually _unnoticeable._ He couldn't afford to draw attention to himself and compromise his mission. His _only_ reason for being here was to dig up the dirt on Oto Psychiatric Facility and find out the truth behind Juugo's suicide.

But being here for _five minutes_ raised a thousand new questions. Namely, _what was the deal_ with the Restricted Ward?

_Only five of us in this section, segregated from the rest of the patients,_ he thought, sorting through what he'd just learned from Naruto, who was a veritable sieve of information. _Six, when the new girl comes tomorrow. I don't know her deal yet, but everybody else…so far…seems like they could be treated with therapy or medication outside this place. So what are they doing here?_

_What's up with the Restricted Ward?_

* * *

**note..** "daisy, why are you starting another story instead of finishing one of your 400 other stories?" "why, because i fucking feel like it, that's why."

i've been kicking this idea around for awhile. it started as a oneshot but then my head-canon kicked into overdrive and now it's a monster-fic. i make no apologies for putting up another one. i need to keep myself entertained writing this stuff or i'll get bored and walk away from it. (like once i tried a pottery class. disaster. i do not have the hands of an artist. but i have the ass of a dancer and that makes it all worth it.)

ANYWAY! let me know if you liked it. have a great weekend! and oh yeah, of course, right, PHILLIES come back on monday! bye, braves.

happy easter!

xoxo Daisy :)


	2. Chapter 2

The black T-shirt was two sizes too big, to say nothing of the overly-starched gray pants that came with it.

"This isn't a beauty contest, Haruno. Hurry it up in there. It's time to meet the other patients."

Sakura paid no attention to the scathing female voice on the other side of the door. She had always been very good at tuning things out she didn't want to hear.

Growing up in and out of foster care, that was one of the first things you became good at. Tuning out the bad things. And she'd only been in this tiny, lonely room for ten minutes, but she already got the sense that _everything_ was a bad thing.

Stealing one last glance at herself in the oversized standard issue psych ward clothing, she turned her back on her reflection and opened the bathroom door again.

The girl who had escorted her to her room, Tayuya, was waiting for her by the small cot with the plain white linens, arms folded, nasty smirk on her face.

"Looks like you could gain a few pounds, sweetheart," she sneered. "You're drowning in those clothes. But I guess it's more clothes than _you've_ been used to wearing lately, might take some time to adjust."

Sakura flinched but said nothing in response, merely set her folded streetclothes on the bed. It was a twin size, the mattress thin, the blanket even thinner, with a flat pillow. The room itself was plain white, empty except for the bed, and the only window was tiny and sealed shut with iron bars.

_It looks like prison,_ she thought, trying not to cry in front of Tayuya, who seemed like the kind of person who liked to play with her food before eating it. _I just…I don't understand where I went wrong. How I ended up here._

…

_The studio apartment was falling apart, she realized, thinking of all the things that needed to be fixed in it on her way home from work. She didn't have any furniture besides a futon given to her by a friend at the strip club who didn't need it anymore, and the only pictures on the walls were of far-off places torn out of magazines. The kitchen sink leaked and two of the four burners on the stove weren't lighting properly; the water ran brown sometimes with rust and she almost always missed the electric bill. It was in a low-rent, frightening area of the city, far away from the bustle and safety of downtown. The projects._

_She loved it with everything she had, because it was ALL she had._

_That, and Moegi. Her sister in everything but blood._

_That night was a tough one at Kunoichi; sparsely attended, which meant fewer tips, which meant no extra money for food. She shuffled home in the rain huddled underneath an umbrella, a shabby trenchcoat concealing the provocative garments that paid her rent, her hands in her pockets. One enclosed around a pocketknife, because it was late, and in a neighborhood like this, you could never be too careful. No matter how tired she was, and no matter how young, Sakura Haruno knew you could never let your guard down._

_One of the many lessons life had taught her in seventeen years._

_It wasn't where she thought she would be, at seventeen. A high school dropout, slaving away at a grungy strip club in the Red Light District to support herself. Living alone, living a lie, but at least everything she had was hers, and _anywhere_ was better than where she'd come from. Even if her job was degrading, her salary demeaning, her lack of education humiliating, Sakura took pride in her work ethic. To take care of herself._

_And to do so away from the horrors of the foster home she'd been raised in._

_So with her eyes always peeled and her pocketknife always ready, she made her way inside the broken-down apartment complex, never once faltering in her stiletto heels. The second she was in the foyer, she exhaled sharply in relief. Another walk home with no interruptions, aside from the occasional catcall._

_A quick glance at the clock hanging in the foyer told her it was a little after 2 am. Her stomach rumbled in hunger, and as she headed up the stairs (the elevator was out of order, as per usual), she tried to remember what was left over in the cupboards that she could cook._

I think we might still have some ravioli I can heat up before I go to bed,_ she thought, exhausted as she reached the third floor. _And maybe some green beans, if…

_Immediately, she froze, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end as she reached the top step. Something was off. Something wasn't right. And Sakura always had very good instincts, even if she couldn't define exactly what was wrong._

_Just then, she heard voices coming from down the hall. Keeping as quiet as possible, she pressed herself against the railing, out of view from whoever was talking in the hallway, to listen. Maybe it was just the neighbors…_

"_How do I always get stuck roundin' up these kids?" she could make out, leaning even closer to hear. "Four years in the police academy, and I get the shaft. Chasin' down snot-nosed little brats like this Haruno girl."_

_Haruno. Her blood ran cold, makeup-smeared eyes went wide, and her breath hitched in her throat. They were discussing _her._ A brave, terrified glance around the corner revealed two police officers posted outside her apartment door, clearly waiting for her. One, she recognized by his greenish hair and the fact that he'd been chasing her ever since the first time she'd run away: the Ame police lieutenant, Aoi Rokusho._

They found me,_ she thought weakly._ Oh, no.

"_She's a looker, ain't she, boss?" the subordinate continued. "Wonder how a cute girl like that ended up in a dump like this."_

"_Don't you READ any of your assignments?" the lieutenant scowled. "She ran away from her foster home last year, we've been looking for her ever since. She's been flying under the radar, dropped out of school, took a job at a local strip joint."_

"_She's underage, though."_

"_Exactly why we're here. We've been looking for that little troublemaker for over a year now."_

And you'll keep looking,_ Sakura thought savagely, fear swallowed up by adrenaline. _I won't go back there. Not ever.

_She knew it would mean abandoning her apartment, her job, leaving town, changing her name, but there weren't any lengths she wouldn't go to, to avoid returning to her foster family. With that in mind, she turned back around on the staircase to run right back out the way she came…_

_At that moment, one of her stilettos caught on the fraying fabric of the worn-out carpet, and she stumbled. She caught herself on the railing before falling, but the resulting smack of her hand on the metal rail drew the officers' attention._

Shit!_ she thought, panicking. _Move, you idiot! Move or they'll take you back!

"_Hey, Aoi!" the junior officer called. "It's her! We got her!"_

"_Shit!" she swore, taking off like lightning down the stairs, umbrella abandoned, along with her reservations._

"_Halt in the name of the law!" barked Aoi, as they chased her down the staircase. "Sakura Haruno, you're…"_

"_I'm NOT going back!" she screamed over her shoulder, flying like hell was on her heels. "Get away from me!"_

"_She's running, Lieutenant!" the junior officer shouted, and she heard them closing in on her as she cleared the first floor. Heart pounding, knowing she was doomed if they grabbed hold of her, Sakura threw her full body weight at the front door and catapulted herself out into the rain._

"_Resisting arrest, huh, sweetheart?" she heard Aoi sneer from behind._

Arrest?_ she thought, eyes widening as she took off through the rainy street, leaving Ame Oak Residential behind her without so much as a single twinge of regret. _They're ARRESTING me?!

"_This is Lieutenant Rokusho requesting backup on Cherry Street, suspect headed towards 72__nd__, underage female, five feet tall, pink hair…"_

_She heard the lieutenant rattle off information to his subordinates on the radio, and knew they would be closing in on her position within minutes. She had to get out of the street, away from the road…under no circumstances could she allow herself to be caught._

_She looked left and right, her vision obscured by the darkness and perennial rain of Ame, and, feeling Aoi closing in on her from behind, took off in a panic down a side alley, her heels thundering against the cobblestones._

Go, go, go!_ she urged herself, running on pure adrenaline at this point, pumping her arms faster and faster to put more distance between herself and the officers chasing her. _Come on, you can't get caught! You have to _move!_

_In the darkness, however, she couldn't see where she was going, and she slipped on an overturned trash can. With a scream, she tripped over it and slammed onto the ground, her knees taking the brunt of the fall. She heard her fishnets tear and felt the sting on her bleeding kneecaps, but before she could scramble to her feet, Aoi caught up at last. He seized her by her long pink hair and threw her bodily back down where she'd fallen._

"_Got you, you little bitch," he snarled, snatching one of her arms and twisting it behind her back. Her trenchcoat ripped open, revealing the lacy undergarments she'd worn during her pole routine at Kunoichi._

"_Let me go!" Sakura screamed, struggling like a wildcat, more willing to rip her own arm out of its socket than let him throw her in his squad car._

"_You've been a pain in our ass for the last year, sweetheart," Aoi growled in her ear, dragging her to her feet. "And as much as I'd like to leave you here in the trash where you belong, you're takin' a little ride now, baby."_

"_I won't go back there!" she cried, tears streaming from how viciously he was pulling her hair, stumbling as he pushed her back out of the alley. "I won't go, you'll have to kill me!"_

_She pictured the little white house with the chocolate brown shutters, remembered the amber-eyed gaze of her foster father like it was yesterday, and struggled even harder. _

"_Back to your foster family?" Aoi laughed. "Nope, sweetheart. Resisting arrest, attacking a police officer…you're headed straight downtown. See if a stint in the slammer'll calm your ass down."_

_When they reached the main street again, rain pouring hard enough to soak, he slammed her up against his police car, bending her over the hood and yanking her free arm behind her back to match the other._

"_Sakura Haruno, you're under arrest," he growled, and she felt the freezing metallic chill of handcuffs as he secured them around her wrists. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you…oh hell, gutter trash like you doesn't have any rights. Get your ass in there."_

_He shoved her in the back of his police car and slammed the door shut, flagging down his partner, who finally caught up with them. "Call it in, kid," he sneered. "Got another one for Orochimaru."_

_Sakura was too shocked, too horrified, and in too much pain to pay any attention to what they were saying. She sat in the back of the police car, eyes wide, breathing heavily as she tried to process what had just happened. The police had found her, after a year of living in secret in the Ame slums. Found her, and arrested her._

_She wondered if the judge would show leniency on a 17-year-old stripper._

…

Remembering the way the wind had been knocked out of her when she was bent over the hood of the cop car made her heartrate quicken as she was marched down the hallway. Tayuya's grip on her arm was like iron, anchoring her to her new reality.

Three days in county jail after her arrest, a preliminary court hearing, and an offer from Dr. Kabuto Yakushi later, she found herself here, in Oto Psychiatric Facility. On the fourth floor of the enormous building, labeled rather ominously, "Restricted Ward."

She didn't know what qualified her to be a patient in this odious-sounding section of the hospital.

She was facing criminal trespassing charges, forgery charges for lying about her name and age at the strip club she'd been illegally employed at, and theft charges (her foster family had accused her of stealing money when she ran away the summer before.) At seventeen, she would still be considered a minor and after serving a stint in juvenile detention, would be sent back to her foster family.

She'd vehemently protested, literally begging the judge not to send her back there. Requesting _years_ in prison in exchange.

Then, the court psychiatrist had spoken with the judge, who declared a half-hour recess; Dr. Yakushi pulled her aside to speak with her, alone. He'd been very kind and understanding when she told him her reasons for not wanting to return to her foster parents.

"_I believe you are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder," _he'd told her from behind thick round glasses, his fingers threaded together. _"Children in the foster care system are often mistreated, and come to resent and fear their caretakers. You're not the first to run away and cry abuse. So considering your fragile mental state…I'm willing to offer you an alternative._"

At the time, it had seemed like a no-brainer. He proposed that she be sentenced to commitment in a new juvenile psychiatric treatment center in Oto, a city miles away from where she'd been staying, for an indefinite amount of time, until she overcame her PTSD. This way, she would avoid jail time, and she was likely to reach 18 before her treatment was completed, which meant when she was finally released, she wouldn't have to return to her foster parents.

And Sakura, without any other options, had agreed.

But now that she was here, inside the treatment facility itself, she was beginning to second guess herself. Because a prison was a prison, whether it called itself that or dressed itself up to be something a little less forbidding.

Freedom never felt so far away.

"Just like you nutcases," scoffed Tayuya, jerking her out of her reverie. "To stare off into space like that. You're right where you need to be, sweetheart. Here with the other whackjobs in RW. C'mon, you're meeting the other inmates in Group Therapy."

"Inmates?" Sakura repeated, frowning at the taller girl as they headed down a smaller hallway.

Tayuya just laughed. "That's what all us lucid people call you fucking patients."

_Bitch,_ Sakura thought, but she figured picking a fight on her first day wasn't going to win her any brownie points. Tayuya jerked her arm and knocked on a heavy metal door at the very end of the hall.

"It's Tayuya, Doctor!" she called. "Got Haruno here. She's all ready!"

The metal door swung forward at her word, and Sakura's heart raced a bit faster as she was shoved unceremoniously inside.

"Ah, Miss Haruno," said Dr. Yakushi, standing from his seat in a circle, warm smile plastered on his face. He crossed the room and took both her hands in greeting. "A pleasure to see you here. Welcome to OPF, we're thrilled to have you! Please, have a seat in the circle, we were just about to begin."

Sakura said nothing in response. It felt like her tongue had dried out. She merely hurried over to the empty seat in the circle and sat down, looking around at the other patients from under her fringe of pink bangs, apprehensive.

There was a blonde boy on her right, with whisker marks on his cheeks and a wide, friendly smile on his face. Beside him was a blonde girl, very beautiful but very thin, who glared at her from behind chilly blue eyes, arms folded in front of her. Next to the blonde girl was a girl with long black hair, who stared straight at the floor, refusing to look up at anybody; beside her was a very pale boy with dark hair and a vacant expression as he regarded her with mild interest. The last patient was a tall boy, black-haired and with strikingly handsome features, hands shoved in the pockets of his gray standard pants, narrowed, almost suspicious eyes taking her in. All of them were wearing the same clothing that she was.

Sakura had to remind herself that while _she_ wasn't crazy, the same wasn't true for the rest of the patients here at OPF. And she found herself in the Restricted Ward; whatever _that_ meant. Apprehension set in, and she threaded her fingers together in her lap, a nervous gesture, and avoided looking at anyone for too long.

Any single one of them could be a serial killer, for all she knew.

"Everyone, this is Sakura Haruno," Dr. Yakushi introduced, taking his seat again. "Sakura is our newest addition to RW. Sakura, these are your new friends."

_Friends?_ she thought, not remotely liking the odious smile that twisted Dr. Yakushi's lips.

"I'm Naruto, Sakura, it's really nice to meet you!" the blonde boy beside her said enthusiastically.

"Nice to meet you, too," she said, hoping she didn't sound as nervous as she felt; psycho or no, Naruto seemed nice and it was against her nature to try and offend anybody.

"I'm Ino," the blonde girl said stiffly, clearly speaking because she was forced to. "That's Hinata," she added, jerking a bony thumb at the girl beside her. "She never talks, so don't even bother."

"My name is Sai," the pale boy introduced himself, his voice monotone. He reminded Sakura of a zombie; dead inside, but still moving around. She sensed absolutely no life in him whatsoever, no warmth, not even a soul.

She nodded, and chanced a glance at the handsome boy with the intense eyes. He blinked and all the suspicion left his gaze, which now looked rather bored.

"Sasuke," he drawled.

"How nice," Dr. Yakushi simpered, making several notes on his clipboard. "Isn't this nice, meeting new friends?"

Sakura looked around the room they were seated in. It was completely empty except for the chairs and the people occupying them, and just like her bedroom, featured tiny windows with iron bars installed, along with blinding white walls with absolutely nothing else on them.

This place was feeling more and more like prison every minute. She couldn't relax, and years of fending for herself had instilled in her a guardedness she couldn't shake. It felt like her every move was being monitored, analyzed, and from people she couldn't see.

She hated this place, she decided.

"Now, Sakura," Dr. Yakushi continued, still writing on his clipboard. "Why don't you tell your new friends what you're being treated for?"

"Um…" she began, not sure how to phrase it, but more so wondering why he was asking her to divulge personal details about her treatment. Wasn't there such a thing as doctor-patient confidentiality?

"'Um' is not a mental illness," Dr. Yakushi remarked.

"Post-traumatic stress disorder," Sakura whispered, hating the way the phrase sounded on her tongue.

"Well _that's_ rough, Sakura-chan!" Naruto said from beside her, clapping a hand on her back. She froze at the unfamiliar contact but didn't say anything; Naruto didn't seem too dangerous. "Were you in a war or something?"

She thought back to her last foster home, back to the chilling fear that gripped her when her bedroom door swung open at night and her foster father came inside, back to the way she was constantly, relentlessly, tirelessly formulating plans for escpae, the drastic measures she'd taken to free herself, and with a curious glint in her eyes, replied, "Sort of."

Dr. Yakushi chuckled as he scribbled some more notes, then stood abruptly, the metal feet of his chair screeching against the bright linoleum floors.

"Well I think that's enough for today," he said, and Sakura was surprised. It had only been two minutes of Group Therapy. Surely nothing had been accomplished in that time?

_What kind of psychiatrist is he?_ she thought, frowning.

"I'll call your handlers in to escort you all to dinner. Tomorrow we'll proceed with your evaluations, and I'll start you on your prescription, Sakura. The sooner you take your meds, the better."

_Meds?_ Sakura thought, frown deepening. _What meds?_

The other patients rose from their seats in unison; Sakura quickly followed suit, not sure what else she was supposed to do. Nobody so much as glanced her way besides Naruto, who was shaping up to be the only friend she was going to have in this place. When Dr. Yakushi unlocked the metal door for them, they were met up with Tayuya and a few rough-looking boys, all of them dressed in white to match the walls; quickly she stepped close to Naruto, hoping to get a little more information.

"Hey," she said quietly. "Are we going to the cafeteria or something?"

"_Our_ cafeteria," he corrected her, keeping his voice down, too as the six of them were herded (like _cattle,_ she couldn't help but notice) down the hallway back the way she'd come. "We're not allowed to eat with the other patients downstairs."

"Really?" That struck her as odd. "Why not?"

"Because you're the craziest of the crazy," Tayuya sneered. "The most dangerous. They can't have you mixing in with the _normal_ psychopaths. Now shut up. No talking in the hallways. Dr. Orochimaru's orders."

Naruto fell silent, and Sakura did, too, lost in her thoughts.

There was something very strange about this place. Something she couldn't quite put her finger on. For example, Dr. Yakushi's eagerness to have her referred to OPF instead of taken to juvenile detention; she'd never, ever been afflicted with mental illness, and even if the case _could_ be made for PTSD, it seemed like a long shot. Certainly nothing she would need to be _committed_ for.

Then there was the two-minute therapy session, and the fact that she'd been assigned to the Restricted Ward. A six-person ward cordoned off from the rest of the enormous psych facility, presumably because all of the patients there were the most dangerous.

_Something's off,_ she thought, her hyperawareness kicking in, age-old, trusted instincts alerting her to an intangible danger. _Something's wrong with this place._

_But what?_

…

After a dinner spent in agonizing, uncomfortable silence with the other patients in RW, Sakura found herself escorted back to her bedroom. The doors locked automatically behind her, and she sat down on the edge of her bed, staring out the tiny, barred window at the starless night sky.

_What am I supposed to do now?_ she thought, as the fluorescent lights overhead turned themselves off, plunging her into darkness. Tears she'd forbidden herself to shed throughout this whole ordeal finally brimmed to the surface of her eyes, and she laid back down on the thin, uncomfortable cot as they spilled over.

_What the HELL am I supposed to do now?_

* * *

**note..** ugh, you guys. i am SO excited to tell this story. i know it's different than the usual diabetes-inducing crap i pump out, so it's a definite challenge for me but i'm really enjoying it. and i hope you are, too. thank you so much for the great response for the first chapter! y'alls hooked me up with reviews and i APPRECIATE IT. keeps me motivated.

and i realize a lot of people might be wondering why i didn't go ahead and make sakura schizophrenic, because of inner sakura and all. seemed like a copout to do that, honestly, just because this is about sakura at 17, and in the newer manga chapters, you don't hear much from inner sakura because real sakura's strong enough to stand on her own. besides, inner sakura felt overused anyway. more like a comic device than a debilitating mental illness. i have a reason for giving sakura ptsd, and there's a lot more going on with her than what meets the eye. excited to get into it, y'all!

oh, and i realize also that maybe the phillies aren't doing as well as normal. but i would like to draw attention to cliff lee's gorgeous 8-inning shutout yesterday. and to the fact that ryan howard guest-starred on the office. so my two favorite things colliding in a vortex of AWESOME!

sorry so chatty tonight. v. bored at work. SO! let me know if you liked this chapter, darlings. i'm having a great time with this jawn.

xoxo Daisy :)


	3. Chapter 3

It was unsettling, just how quiet things got at night.

It wasn't that Sasuke was expecting a party or anything. This _was_ a psych ward, after all, and for all he knew, he was commiserating with some serious psychopaths. Not everyone was faking a mental illness the way he was.

But he wasn't ready for just how _still_ everything became after lights out, as if even the wind outside slowed to a tepid halt. He couldn't hear anything except his own steady breathing, and that of his roommate on the cot across the room. Not even the tick of a clock on the wall. There was no way of gauging time in their room, not with the door locked tightly from the outside.

_This place is worse than jail,_ he thought, frustrated as he turned on his side to face the tiny window, the only glimpse of elusive freedom in the room. The cot was uncomfortable, way too thin to support him properly; his back ached already, to say nothing of his knees. The pillow, if it could be called that, was too flat to offer any neck support and the sheets were overly-starched.

"It's rough, the first night," Naruto said quietly from across the room. He was clearly trying to extend the hand of friendship, something Sasuke couldn't understand. For all Naruto knew of him, he was a deranged, violent, dropout junkie who couldn't control his temper; clearly, the moron had to be hard-up for friends, if someone with Sasuke's reputation was appealing in that respect.

He chose not to answer.

"What'd you think of Meeting today?" Naruto pressed, clearly not getting the hint.

"It was stupid," Sasuke mumbled honestly. He didn't know if the two-minute session Dr. Yakushi had hosted earlier that day could qualify as therapy. He'd only seen the man for a few minutes altogether, but he was getting the very strong impression that he was a quack.

"Yeah, usually they last a lot longer," Naruto remarked casually. "I guess he didn't want to overwhelm the new girl. And she's a total babe, ain't she?"

Sasuke thought back to the new girl brought into the Restricted Ward that day. Like all the others, she'd seemed completely lucid at first glance, her eyes clear and bright, alert and aware. She wasn't mumbling to herself or staring blankly into space. Sure, he'd only seen her for a few minutes, but post-traumatic stress disorder didn't seem like a debilitating illness. Something that outpatient therapy could handle.

_It just keeps building up,_ Sasuke thought suspiciously, eyes narrowed. _Six kids, none of us with serious mental illnesses, but all of us cordoned off from the rest of the ward like we're dangerous._

Then, he stopped himself. It wasn't like he'd spent enough time in this ward and around these people to be able to say that none of them were seriously ill. He was suspicious of the ward because of what had happened to Juugo; he needed to be sure he wasn't reading into things that weren't there, just to rush the results.

_Maybe they ARE crazy,_ he thought, despite his gut feeling that that wasn't true. _Maybe there IS a legitimate reason we're all quarantined from the rest of the ward._

"You asleep, Sasuke?"

Sasuke grit his teeth and ignored his roommate. He had some serious thinking to do – and so much to tell Itachi, in two weeks when they reunited for visitation – and he wasn't in the mood to listen to Naruto prattle on about nothing.

"Well I'm glad you're here, man," Naruto went on quietly. "It was hard, after Juugo…you know, my roommate, after he killed himself."

Sasuke froze.

"It's fucking weird, though, man. Because none of us knew how he even got his hands on a belt in the first place. That's what he used, when he hung himself. And we're not allowed to wear belts."

Sasuke's eyes widened; the thought hadn't occurred to him, either. The dress code at OPF was extremely rigid; he and the five other patients in RW wore black T-shirts and gray pants with no drawstring, zipper, or button, and shoes with no laces. The other patients on the lower floors all wore white versions of the same outfit, to differentiate them from "the real crazies" in RW. Belts weren't allowed.

So how would Juugo have gotten his hands on one?

Sasuke's gut instinct – that what had happened to Juugo was much more complicated than suicide – had never felt so accurate. The more Naruto ran off at the mouth, the closer he felt to finding the answers he so desperately sought.

"Anyway. I'm glad _you're_ here, it was getting scary as hell staying in this empty room, knowing what happened in that closet. Well I'm going to sleep. 'Night, man."

There were so many things to consider, so many hunches to follow, that Sasuke's head ached just picturing the job that lay in front of him. He would not only have to dig up the dirt in the ward, which would no _doubt_ be harder than it looked, but he would also have to play the part of a psych patient convincingly, so as to avoid suspicion.

_This is gonna be harder than I thought._

…

"Up and at 'em, pretty boy!"

Sasuke's eyes snapped open as the familiar rancid breath of Zaku infiltrated his nostrils. He sat up abruptly, turning a hateful glare on Zaku and _despising_ the way he laughed.

"I know you probably want some more beauty sleep," he sneered, "but it's time for breakfast. Get your lazy ass out of bed and get in line with the others."

Sasuke was supposed to be playing the part of a very angry, very violent boy who couldn't control his temper. Maybe it would be in-character of him to punch the living shit out of Zaku and leave him writhing in his own blood.

_Not yet,_ he told himself furiously, standing up off the god-awful cot and stalking out of the room after Naruto.

Everyone else in RW was already in the hallway waiting for them. The blonde girl, Ino, if he remembered her name (it was always difficult for him to remember girls' names), turned an unimpressed glare on him from behind her sunken blue eyes and looked promptly away. The others didn't look up, except for the new girl, the one with pink hair and PTSD, who smiled tentatively at him.

She was too small for the clothes she was wearing, and looked fantastically out of place. He didn't return the smile, but he fell into place beside her. Better her than that creepy kid who never showed any emotion on his face. Sai, if his memory was to be believed.

"Everybody here?" Zaku asked, amused. He and the other handlers (Sasuke didn't know their names yet) surrounded the six of them like cattle herders. "Then let's get going. Hurry up, we ain't got all day to twiddle our thumbs and stare into space like _you_ nutcases."

It would appear that they didn't allow the patients to converse in the hallways, something that Sasuke didn't understand. He wasn't a big conversationalist and wouldn't talk to anyone unless he had to, anyway, but to forbid a bunch of kids from opening their mouths in the hall? It would seem that every measure had been taken to wear down the spirits of all the kids in RW.

"Hey there, gorgeous," Zaku said coolly, and Sasuke glanced up out of the corner of his eye and saw him fall into step on the new girl's other side. He watched her hands clench into fists, and she turned away from Zaku, clearly not impressed. "I'd ask your name, but I already know it."

"Then don't waste my time," the new girl replied quietly, but with so much acid in her voice that Sasuke's eyes widened by a margin. She looked so deceptively sweet and fragile; he would never have guessed she could harness so much cold animosity inside of her, but then again, Zaku _was_ the scum of the earth.

"Ooh, kitty likes to _scratch,_" Zaku sneered. "That's okay, I like the feisty ones."

"Careful, Zaku," the female handler, a girl with hot pink hair and a foul mouth, told him, amused. "Little Sakura here isn't as sweet as she seems. You read her file, you know what's up with her."

Sakura's eyes narrowed and she bowed her head; Sasuke's curiosity piqued.

"Well seeing as how you and I are gonna be seeing _quite_ a lot of each other from now on," Zaku continued, draping an arm around Sakura's shoulders, "why don't we get to know each other a little better?"

Sakura shrugged him off and spared him a glare full of all the menace in the world. "Keep your hands off of me," she hissed.

Zaku and the other handlers just laughed, but Sasuke caught the note of panic on Naruto's face as he watched the scene. _Why's he panicking?_ Sasuke thought. _She just pushed him off of her._

"Keep it up, sweetheart," Zaku challenged, grabbing her bicep and pulling her to a stop. "Getting sassy with one of your superiors can get you punished around here."

"_Superiors?_" Sakura repeated, her voice a boiling hiss, and by now the entire group stopped to watch the confrontation. Sasuke didn't like the way Zaku was looking at Sakura, and knew that while he was supposed to be playing a role, he couldn't stand idly by if the asshole decided to get violent with a girl. He tensed for a fight.

"That's right, sweetheart."

"You're not our _superiors,_" Sakura snapped. "You're bullies who get a paycheck."

Zaku laughed. "Better that, than taking your clothes off for money. Right, sweetheart?"

Sasuke wasn't sure how it happened, but one second Zaku was making suggestive remarks about Sakura, the next, he was on his ass. Sakura stood over him with her fist still clenched, knuckles still bleeding, green eyes wild with anger.

"You are the _last_ person to judge me!" she screamed.

"Get that bitch!" Zaku howled, hands over his face as he rolled on the floor in agony. "She broke my goddamn nose!"

Sasuke's first instinct was to intervene, when Dosu and the others closed in on Sakura, but he had to remind himself that he was playing a part here. His goal was to fly under the radar – no matter how unpleasant the circumstances. Kicking up a fuss was bound to attract attention in a negative light, and for him to accomplish his goal, he had to stay out of everyone's way. Exhaling sharply through his nose, he forced himself to stay still with the others as Dosu seized a struggling Sakura and slammed her up against the wall.

The female handler yanked something out of her bag – Sasuke recognized it as a syringe – and rushed to the scuffle. Two of the bigger handlers blocked Sasuke's view, but he saw the girl administer the injection into one of Sakura's arms, then abruptly, all struggling and shouting ceased as Sakura went limp.

_What the hell was in that?_ he thought, frowning.

"No time for little troublemakers like _you,_" spat Dosu, slinging Sakura's motionless body over his shoulder. "It's solitary for you, sweetheart."

_Solitary?_ Sasuke thought, noting how all the other patients around him – even emotionless Sai – shuddered a little at the word. He watched as Dosu carried Sakura off down a side corridor, and Zaku, plugging up his bleeding nose and looking angrier than ever, snapped, "Well what're _you_ all waiting around for? Get moving."

…

At breakfast, Naruto looked miserable as he pushed his food around on his plate. Sasuke, still heated from the confrontation in the hallway, didn't have much of an appetite either. He didn't like what had just happened – drugging Sakura and taking her off to solitary, whatever that was – and thought it was a gross overreaction. The staff was harassing her, and she'd defended herself. How did _that_ warrant all the consequences she was suffering now?

He didn't like talking to people, especially not the maybe-nutcases he was forced to interact with, but he couldn't stop himself.

"What the hell was that?" he hissed to his tablemates.

There was a collective sigh, before Naruto said quietly, "Here, you learn pretty quick not to cause any trouble."

"_They_ were harassing _her._ She didn't cause trouble, she…"

"It doesn't matter," the blonde girl said sharply, her voice cutting across the table like acid. Sasuke's eyes narrowed as they focused on her; she was glaring at her food and didn't bother to look up at him. "You say anything, you're causing trouble. You complain about anything, you're causing trouble. Wake up. This place is worse than jail and the sooner she realizes you can't do anything about it, the better."

…

Sakura was conspicuously absent from Group Meeting that afternoon, something Sasuke couldn't ignore. His eyes bore into the empty chair with a mixture of confusion and suspicion.

_Dosu said 'solitary,' and everyone froze up,_ he thought, tuning out Dr. Yakushi's prattling therapy session with the seasoned skill of a professional apathetic. _He couldn't mean solitary confinement, could he? I thought they outlawed that kind of shit years ago. Cruel and unusual, or whatever. But one word of that and everyone panicked._

Sasuke knew next to nothing about psychotherapy, but right now, he wished he'd studied more before going undercover. He didn't know what constituted normal therapy and what was crossing the line; perhaps if he did, he wouldn't be so unsettled by the empty chair beside him.

"Well that settles it for today," Dr. Yakushi said mildly. "Sasuke, if you wouldn't mind staying behind so we can have some one-on-one, I'd appreciate it. Everyone else, you're free to go."

_That's a weird way of wording it,_ Sasuke thought with a humorless smirk. _'Free to go,' when we can't go anywhere without his lackeys watching our every move._

Sure enough, the metal door buzzed open and in came a few white-dressed OPF handlers to escort the others back to their rooms. Sasuke did not like being left alone with Dr. Yakushi, who reminded him of Nazi prison doctors in more ways than one, but this could be an opportunity to glean something important for his mission.

So he banished any discomfort from his expression and posture, and met Dr. Yakushi's inquisitive stare with a bland one of his own.

"So. Sasuke Uchiha."

Dr. Yakushi consulted a clipboard as he addressed him, and Sasuke took the opportunity to analyze his analyst. He was very young, looked hardly out of college let alone medical school, even if his silver-white hair was considered. He wore round glasses with thick lenses and seemed very well-dressed, even for a doctor, in leather shoes and a well-tailored suit. His demeanor was painfully polite, but Sasuke sensed a hidden smugness, an emotional detachment from his surroundings that bordered on cruel.

_He wants to try and figure me out,_ he thought, suppressing a smirk. _Same here, Doc._

"How was your first night here?" asked Dr. Yakushi conversationally, crossing his legs and looking perfectly at ease.

Sasuke shrugged. No sense in making it easy for him.

"Many patients have difficulty adjusting to the routine here, you wouldn't be the first to suffer a sleepless night. Therapy, ironically, begins with some of the most stress-inducing conditions a person can endure: isolation from the outside world, for starters. Many patients find themselves feeling terribly…_alone._"

Sasuke decided he did not remotely like the way the doctor spoke. It was not only with the typical respect for his profession that a psychiatrist might be expected to have; no, Dr. Yakushi seemed to enjoy, _relish_ what he was talking about, if the way his beady eyes lit up was any indication. It didn't feel like he was commenting compassionately on the circumstances in a psychiatric facility. It felt like a thinly-veiled threat, if anything.

His eyes narrowed.

"I bet you wonder how you ended up _here,_" Dr. Yakushi went on.

"No I don't."

The doctor smiled.

"Fair enough, I suppose you understand your violent tendencies better than anybody else. Care to talk about that at all?"

"No."

"You realize, Sasuke, that the point of therapy is to discuss your personal feelings so you can better understand yourself and your instincts? To learn how to adapt to your surroundings in a positive way?"

"Adaptation," Sasuke said flatly, glaring at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling that were starting to get on his nerves. "If this is about me _adapting,_ then why am I _committed._"

He'd made a valiant try for subtlety, but Sasuke's suspicions about what was _really_ going on in OPF, more specifically, the Restricted Ward, were grating on his temper. He was impatient to find answers, and not entirely sure if he could weather two more weeks of this environment.

"I can understand your skepticism," said Dr. Yakushi sympathetically, scribbling something on his clipboard before setting it on his lap, and lacing his fingers together. "Oftentimes, the most unstable individual has no solid conception of his own instability, not until it's laid bare for him by an objective third party. Your inability to handle your anger…to control yourself…landed you here, in OPF. The Restricted Ward is reserved for the most dangerous youth inmates – excuse me, patients – and whether or not you understand this about yourself now, Sasuke, you are _exactly_ where you need to be right now."

_Bullshit,_ Sasuke thought furiously.

"And the others?" he demanded. "They're all nutcases, too?"

Dr. Yakushi chuckled. "Interesting, how you have such faith in their mental stability after so little time spent with them."

"None of them seem insane to _me._" Well, maybe Sai, but none of the others, anyway.

"And are you a medical doctor? Are you a seasoned psychoanalyst? In fact, beyond sharing a room with Mr. Uzumaki, do you really know _anything_ about them?"

Sasuke hesitated. He really couldn't argue that, could he? When all he had to bring to the table were his instincts?

"Take, for example, Miss Haruno," Dr. Yakushi went on. "On the surface, she seems like quite the sweetheart. Very delicate, very intelligent, very kind. Nothing in her appearance or demeanor to suggest that there's anything overtly wrong with her. Right?

"But what you may not know about her is that she's had a few run-ins with the law. She dropped out of high school last year, ran away from her home, and took up a job in a strip club under an assumed identity. Stole a considerable amount of money from her foster parents beforehand. And you'd never know it to look at her, would you?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed even further. "Why are you telling me this?" he demanded, not liking how readily Dr. Yakushi divulged personal client information. "I thought doctors were supposed to have confidentiality for their patients."

"Why, to illustrate the point that not _everything_ is as it appears," replied Dr. Yakushi smoothly, unruffled by Sasuke's accusation. "And I suspect that the same might be true for you, Sasuke."

Sasuke stiffened, but didn't dare take his eyes off the doctor's face; to look away would show discomfort, anxiety, and even if his heartrate was beginning to pick up, he absolutely couldn't risk showing his hand this early in the game. Not when he felt closer to his answers than ever. Thinking of Juugo, he steeled his features and met Dr. Yakushi's gaze coolly, fearlessly.

"I suspect that there is much more to you than some angry, misunderstood teenager with control issues," Dr. Yakushi said softly, lips tilting into a heinous smirk. "Much, _much_ more than meets the eye. And I'm _determined_ to find out what that something more is, exactly."

Sasuke knew it wasn't a very good idea to provoke the doctor, not at this stage, anyway, but maybe there was something to Yakushi's comment about self-control. Because without rational thought, he felt his own mouth contort into a smirk to mirror the doctor's, and he murmured, a direct challenge, "You can try."

…

"Here you go, pretty boy," said Dosu that evening, before bed. He handed Sasuke a tiny paper cup; inside were two pills. Small red capsules with an 'O' emblazoned on either one.

"What the hell is this?" Sasuke demanded, nowhere near crazy enough to take a pill without knowing its exact name and function.

"Your prescription," Dosu replied, grinning, but he didn't probe Sasuke any further than that.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed as he accepted the cup, pausing before swallowing the pills. He met Dosu's gaze evenly, and stated, "You know, you're not half as ballsy without your little _friend_ to back you up," referring to Zaku. Remembering the bloody mess that Sakura girl had made of his nose, he smirked. "Getting his ass handed to him by some tiny girl must've really gotten to him, huh?"

From the other bed, Naruto snorted in amusement, stifling it with the back of his hand.

Far from getting pissed off at Sasuke's blatant provocation, Dosu's grin widened.

"Oh, yeah. The stripper with the pink hair. She may have gotten her cheap shot…but Dr. Orochimaru has a zero tolerance policy for any attacks on staff. Her going crazy like that landed her _exactly_ where she needs to be."

_Solitary,_ Sasuke thought in confirmation. Sakura's absence at dinner that night suggested that she was still in lockdown. _So that's how they punish disobedience here._

"You know," Dosu went on, "solitary – so they say – is as bad as torture sometimes. Total isolation, sensory deprivation…they use it in military interrogations sometimes, to get prisoners to talk. Turns grown men into crying little babies. Doesn't even take very long, either, for the loneliness to really get to you.

"We don't just use it on unruly patients, either. We use it on disobedient ones, too. You know. Smug assholes who don't feel like taking their meds and shit."

A direct threat. Sasuke's eyes narrowed. He wasn't intimidated by the possibility of solitary confinement – he wasn't intimidated by _anything_ – but he doubted he'd be able to learn much about the facility if he was locked up, like that Sakura girl.

And it was incredibly reckless of him, he knew, to willingly ingest a drug whose function was completely unknown to him, especially when the motives of OPF were entirely suspect – Itachi would kill him if he found out – but what better way to investigate what was really happening here, than to completely give himself over?

With that, he tossed the cup back, swallowing both pills dry and trying not to let Dosu's dark, sinister chuckle bother him. He felt Naruto's gaze on him from across the room.

"Lights out in five minutes, pretty boy," Dosu said quietly. "Take a lesson from that dumbass stripper, and don't go causing trouble."

With that, he left the room, the metal door clanging shut behind him.

Sasuke turned to Naruto, arms folded across his chest.

"They're serious, then?" he asked. "About solitary? That's real?"

Naruto, who seemed to be one of the most frustratingly positive people Sasuke had ever met, sighed and a look of despondency passed through his eyes. He looked almost dead.

"Yeah, man. It's real. They use it on us when we do something to piss 'em off."

"How long?"

"Two days, usually. Sometimes three. Longest was Juugo, he was in there for a week. When he came out, he wasn't…he wasn't ever really the same."

Sasuke swallowed hard, picturing his gentle friend locked up in a cage like an animal, and sat down on the edge of his coat. The image made him unbelievably angry.

"You've been in there before?"

Naruto nodded, scratching the back of his head in blatant discomfort. "Yeah. Few times. It's…man, there's nothing like it, there really isn't. You're so…_cut off_ from everything, it's like you forget who you are. You can't measure how much time goes by and it feels like a week when it's only been a day. You hear things, see things that aren't there. It's…it's not human, what it does to you in there. What you do to yourself."

He shook his head. "I wish someone would've warned Sakura. It's no place for a girl like that. Do yourself a favor, and keep your head down."

Sasuke hesitated, then said, "You don't seem like the type to take that shit lying down."

Naruto laughed humorlessly, looking much older than his seventeen years, and said, "Oh, I wasn't. Not at first. But after you've been here awhile?"

His expression steeled over, and Sasuke got the sense that he was reliving a thousand memories he knew nothing about.

"This place changes you," Naruto finished coolly. "And the most you can hope for is that you get out in one piece."

…

That night, as Sasuke struggled with the foggy line between sleep and wakefulness, he hoped he was just imagining the high-pitched, girlish screams resonating from the floor above.

* * *

**note..** really having a good time with this one. it's challenging in a good way, keeps me engaged and interested enough to want to work on it.

and i hope that nobody's turned off by the whole sakura-being-a-stripper thing, and that people keep an open mind. it's a device to illustrate the desperate things people will do to protect themselves, and that's gonna be huge in this story for all the characters, not just sakura.

so, let me know if you liked it! you guys are great about that, i appreciate your reviews so, so much :) thank you so much for always having my back, you guys are great!

go phils :)

xoxo daisy :)


	4. Chapter 4

Breathe in.

_Just close your eyes, little girl._

Breathe out.

_It'll be okay._

Breathe in.

_Shush. Dry your eyes._

_I'll be gentle._

…

_This should be illegal,_ Sakura thought, pacing the room like a caged animal, arms folded across her chest against the uncomfortable chill. _They outlawed this kind of barbaric treatment YEARS ago! _

There was no way to measure the passage of time, so she had no way of guessing how many hours (days?) it had been since she was unceremoniously dumped onto the shallow cot of SC-4.

Solitary.

There were no windows in the tiny room, the walls, floors, and ceiling covered in cement; there was a chair in the corner with rather ominous-looking leather wrist and ankle attachments and the thin cot she'd woken up on, but nothing else.

At first, it wasn't so terrible, her stint in the Hole.

It wasn't like she had friends in here (or anywhere else, for that matter), anyone to miss her if she disappeared for hours on end, and she wasn't too keen on getting to know anybody else housed in the Restricted Ward. And besides the chair with the leather straps, there wasn't too big of a difference between the Hole and the room she'd been assigned the previous day anyway.

She woke with a killer headache, feeling groggy and lethargic, and she deduced from her hazy memories that she must've been drugged. Apparently the orderlies hadn't been too fond of the way she'd fought with Zaku Abumi, but she couldn't help but feel like he'd deserved it.

The blistering _unfairness_ of it all! She wound up locked in solitary confinement like some _psychopath,_ while he was free to strut around the ward like he owned everybody inside it.

After trying to sleep (and being thoroughly unable to, now that she'd woken out of her drug-induced coma), she paced around the room for awhile, counting seconds and minutes in her head just for something to do. When her muscles ached, she stretched them out with some mostly-forgotten pilates, did a few sit-ups out of sheer boredom, then resigned herself to sitting on the cot with her back to the cold cement wall, waiting for something to change.

It was a frightening concept after some time had passed, though. Not knowing when she'd be released was a definite concern, but even more than that was Sakura's fear of being alone with her own thoughts.

Her head, she knew, was a very dark and sinister place. With her past (and now her present, and most likely her future as well), she'd grown accustomed to tuning out the things that frightened her, that upset her, that angered her, that she couldn't quite deal with. She kept herself busy at all times and never allowed herself a moment or two to reflect on all the problems that had piled up over the years.

But now, this stint in solitary confinement gave her plenty of the very thing she never wanted:

Silence.

Silence and _time._

She sat on the floor, blowing a chunk of her bangs out of her eyes, and stared up at the ceiling. _I wonder what time it is,_ she thought. With nothing else to do, she let her eyes drift shut.

…

"_It's okay, Moegi!" Sakura said cheerfully, a brilliant smile on her face as she sat on the picnic blanket, never letting her façade break. "It'll be great. The Sarutobis are a wonderful family! This was your dream, remember? Finally getting your own family – a _permanent_ one! Don't cry, this is a happy day!"_

_And it was. Sakura was thrilled for little Moegi, who, like her, had been shunted around from foster family to foster family her entire life. Little eight-year-old Moegi, who'd lived with her off and on for the past several years, and who was now about to be adopted, officially, by a loving, close-knit family who desperately wanted a little girl to love._

_It was every foster child's dream come true, and Sakura was delighted that it was happening to Moegi._

"_How can it be happy?" Moegi sobbed, tears streaming down her rosy cheeks unchecked. "I wanted to be adopted with _you!_"_

_Sakura smiled, because her little sister (unrelated by blood, but some bonds are stronger than that) was still so painfully naïve about the world. It was rare for a child as old as Moegi to be adopted; typically, families looking to adopt went for very young babies. The older the child, the less likely it would be to find them a permanent home._

_At sixteen, Sakura had essentially given up on her dream to find a family of her own. As far as orphans went, she was officially unmarketable._

"_You'll have a new family now, Moegi," she said softly, stroking the little girl's red hair with a maternal tenderness she'd never been shown. "One who loves you. One who can give you things you'd never get staying here with me. At this house, with our foster parents. They're very nice, aren't they? Asuma and Kurenai. Very nice people. They'll take good care of you. Oh, and you'll have a dog, they've got a dog, you know! And a big backyard, and you'll get to go to a good school all the way out in Konoha, and…"_

"_I don't want that!" Moegi wailed, throwing her arms around Sakura's neck. "I just want to stay with you! Why couldn't they adopt you, too?"_

_Sakura refused to cry. Enough tears had been shed in her life for her circumstances; she would never tell Moegi that there was a little girl inside of her that desperately wanted what Moegi was getting. A family to take her home and love her, never to hurt her the way she'd been hurt, again. She forced herself to be grateful that at least one of them could escape their current situation._

_Moegi would finally be safe, and that was all she could really hope for._

"_I'm too old," Sakura said finally, holding the little girl and watching the clouds dance past the sun. "Not many families are looking to adopt teenagers, you know. But it's okay, it really is! Because I'll be eighteen soon, and I'll be living on my own then. And I'll finish high school and when I go to college, guess where I'll go?"_

"_W-Where?" sniffled Moegi._

"_Konoha University," she replied triumphantly. "Which is in the same city you'll be living in with the Sarutobi family. So we won't be apart for too long, sweetie. You see? It's just a couple of years. And you'll have such a great time, you really will!"_

"_You…you mean it? You'll go to college in Konoha? You promise? You swear?"_

_Sakura's smile was convincing enough, even if she knew the sad, twisted truth herself; she'd already begun to make plans to escape her house well before the age of eighteen. And now that she knew that Moegi had found a loving family who would protect and care for her, she didn't have any loose ends left. Nothing tying her to her nightmarish reality._

_Unfortunately, desperate times called for desperate measures, and lately, college was looking less and less like a possibility. Education is one of the first things to be sacrificed when you're fighting for survival._

"_Pinky swear," she said instead, locking pinkies with Moegi and kissing them. It was kinder to give her little sister some hope, while the impending separation was still raw; the most Sakura could hope for was that Moegi would grow to love her new family so much, that she would forget about her big sister. Forget about her so she wouldn't even notice Sakura's broken promise._

_The girl she loved most in the world, and all she wanted from her was to be forgotten._

"_But…are you gonna be okay?" Moegi asked, looking worried as she wiped the tears from her eyes. "Back there? Daddy's scary. And he's always meanest to you."_

_Sakura flinched but her smile didn't waver._

"_Of course I'll be okay," she said brightly. "I'll take good care of myself, I promise."_

_So many promises she was making. So many promises she knew she'd be breaking._

"_I'll m-miss you, S-Sakura," Moegi whimpered. "And…and…"_

"_Shhh, baby girl." Sakura held her tight, hiding her teary eyes in thick red hair. "Shhh. It's okay. Because tomorrow, everything changes for you. It's gonna be good. It's gonna be wonderful. So you just promise me that you'll take this amazing opportunity and run with it. You're gonna be good for the Sarutobis, right?"_

"_Right."_

"_And you're gonna study hard just like we do here, right?"_

"_Right."_

"_And you're gonna remember to feed the puppy three times a day, and never forget his leash. Right?"_

"_Right!"_

_Sakura watched the little girl grow more and more excited with every passing moment; soon, her anxieties about being separated from her big sister would be nothing more than a distant memory, now that she was finally getting her well-deserved dream come true. And Sakura, though she mourned for the loss of the only person in the world she genuinely loved, couldn't have been happier for her._

_But God, oh God would she miss her._

…

"Oi, you! Wake up, Sleepin' Beauty!"

Sakura's eyes snapped open and she was on her feet in seconds, familiar instincts kicking in; years in and out of foster care had taught her to wake the _fuck_ up whenever she sensed trouble, and sure enough, she registered the presence of Zaku, nursing a bruised nose and glaring at her spitefully. She heard a high, keening scream, too, and realized belatedly that it was coming from _her._

"What do _you_ want?" she hissed, unsettled by the fact that she'd been kept in this tiny room for what felt like a week.

"I've had just about enough of your attitude," he snarled, seizing her bicep and hauling her towards the open door. "Your time's up, you're going back to your room. Unless you'd rather stay here?"

"How long was I in there?" she demanded. "You can't keep people in there for _days on end,_ you _prick!_"

The lights in the hallway were disturbingly bright and she squinted her eyes against them, stumbling a little; Zaku kept yanking her along, chuckling all the while.

"_Days on end, _huh? You've only been in there for _ten hours._"

Sakura's eyes widened. _Ten…ten HOURS? There's no WAY. There's just no way it was only ten hours, how could it only have been ten hours?_

She was full-on panicking at this point. How could her concept of time have been so severely off? She would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that they'd kept her in Solitary for three days, but it was a measly ten _hours?_

_What was I thinking, agreeing to this deal?_ she thought in dread, as Zaku dragged her back down the RW hallway and finally shoved her into her room. _I could've…I could've gone back to the house, and just run away again. I didn't have to do this. This is prison, too. Everywhere is prison. No matter where I go, they don't want me to be free._

There was something seriously wrong with the way OPF was run. The orderlies created chaos and defending herself only got her into trouble; they used ancient and archaic methods of punishment that were proven to cause acute anxiety and distress, likened to _torture,_ and no one seemed willing to stand up to it; the doctor who'd admitted her here in the first place was entirely suspect and nobody she associated with seemed _really_ crazy, at _all._

And she was stuck here, indefinitely, with no way to escape and no idea where to start to even try. No friends, no family, no allies whatsoever, and no way to predict – or prevent – what was going to happen to her from here on out.

This was a prison of her own choosing, she realized, sitting quietly on the edge of her bed, trying to regulate her heavy breathing and adjust to the bright lights again. A prison she'd willfully signed herself into. She might as well have turned the key in the lock and flushed it down the toilet herself.

And that, she knew, was the worst kind of prison in the world. The kind you never saw coming.

…

The residents at RW were allotted a certain amount of socialization time after dinner. Sakura picked at her bland meal unenthusiastically – her stint in the Hole had robbed her of any appetite – but was bizarrely grateful to be back around people, even ones she'd been intimidated by when she'd first met them.

Just ten hours of forced isolation, and she'd almost gone crazy. Hell, maybe she really was, to be relieved to be laying eyes on the other members of the Restricted Ward.

The room was sparsely-furnished, like everywhere else in the Ward. There were a handful of utilitarian armchairs and a table with a number of boardgames underneath that nobody bothered to touch. Most everyone kept to themselves, reading or writing or drawing or painting, but Sakura decided that she'd had enough quiet time. Enough time spent drowning in her own miserable thoughts.

So she joined the blonde boy – Naruto – in the corner, where he was sitting with a book in his lap. Quietly, sadly, she said, "Hi, Naruto."

He looked up, his eyes a bit glassy and unfocused, nowhere near as bright and piercing as they'd been when she'd met him earlier. His movements were slow and sluggish; she got the sense that he was on drugs, and almost left him alone before he smiled, dopey but sweet.

"Hey, Sakura," he murmured, speech slow and slightly slurred. "Sorry you were in Iso. I know it sucks."

"It did," she sighed, glad to have someone, even someone as drugged-up and insane as Naruto, to talk to. "Do…do you…um…are you in there a lot?"

She registered the fact that their conversation was drawing attention; the bulimic blonde girl looked up from her painting with sunken blue eyes that were harsh, but not quite mean; Sasuke, the handsome boy with the bad attitude, didn't look over, but she noticed that his eyes weren't moving to take in any of the words in the book in his hands, a sure sign he was eavesdropping.

"Not anymore," Naruto mumbled. "Used to. Whenever I got outta line. Now I don't get outta line anymore. Don't want to go into Iso. You shouldn't either. Just…just take your meds and stay outta trouble, S'kura. Kay?"

She hesitated, wanting to cry looking at this empty shell of a boy, so medicated he couldn't articulate words properly, and sighed.

"Okay, Naruto."

He smiled and returned to his book, essentially dismissing her.

Sakura looked around and noticed that the others were in roughly the same state. Hinata, the girl who never spoke to anyone, was huddled in her corner, her arms wrapped tight around her legs, face hidden by her hair, but her telltale stillness revealed she was sleeping.

_Fatigue,_ Sakura noticed, frowning slightly as she ran a hand through her messy pink hair. _Drowsiness, slowness, slurred speech, unfocused gaze…_

The same was true for Sai, slowly painting something at the table. And Ino, who laid back in her armchair and closed her eyes to sleep.

_They're all medicated,_ she realized, astonished at the drastic difference between the people gathered among her now, compared to earlier; they'd been lively, then, during Group Therapy, perhaps not as cheerful as she would prefer, but definitely alert. Now, they all seemed…

Like zombies. Lifeless.

She couldn't talk to Naruto right now, not when he wasn't in his right mind; she wouldn't find any answers here, nothing that could help her escape this nuthouse and take her shitshow on the road. And that, she realized, was her primary motivation: getting the _hell_ out of here, plea bargain be damned. She'd take being a fugitive again _any day_ over this insanity, and she'd only been here one _day._

With a sigh of surrender, she traipsed over to Sasuke, who looked up at her from underneath a fringe of dusky hair with his eyebrows raised, a silent 'What the hell do you want?'

There was definitely some life in _him,_ at least, judging by the acid in his gaze. If he was drugged like the rest of them were, he was actively fighting against it. Plus, she knew he was new to the Ward as well; perhaps, since the others had been here so much longer, they were more susceptible to the side effects of whatever drugs they were taking? Longer exposure, and whatever.

Either way, bad attitude or good, violent he may be, Sakura knew that right now, her best shot for companionship was this mean-looking boy with dark eyes.

If she couldn't _escape_ right now, she'd settle for some fucking _conversation._ At least until she figured out a way out of this mess. And at the moment, Sasuke was the only one not out of his mind on drugs.

"I'm Sakura," she introduced needlessly, nervously fiddling a wrinkled stack of playing cards she'd swiped from the games table.

"I know," he replied, his voice deep and rumbling. She'd venture to say 'thrilling,' but he still refused to drop his suspicious gaze, and it was starting to throw her off.

"I'm…I'm afraid of Solitary," she admitted, not entirely sure why she was saying that.

"I know."

"I'm _not_ crazy," she added, almost desperately.

And Sasuke, brooding, pissed-off, agitated Sasuke, smirked a little and nearly whispered, "I know."

…

That night, Sakura didn't sleep well. Instead, she found herself making plans again. Plea bargain or no, she wasn't going to stay here one more _moment_ than she had to. The very _second_ she could figure out a way out of Oto, she would take it. Make up a new name and move to a different city, and start the cycle all over again.

She'd always been very, very good at getting away; the problem, she knew, would be _staying_ away.

She thought of Moegi, always, who would have been with the Sarutobi family for over a year by now. No letters, no phone calls, no contact of any kind; the most she could hope for was that her little sister was happy, safe, and loved. Even if it hurt her immensely to picture that happy family she'd never be a part of, even if it hurt her to think of Moegi and miss her as intensely now as she had a year ago, she did it anyway.

And she thought of a maybe-crazy boy with an easy smirk, and how it would figure that her first friend since _Moegi_ would be someone as volatile and unpredictable as Sasuke Uchiha. Mysterious, reserved, possibly psychotic, and after two games of Poker and absolutely no conversation beyond 'Call, Raise, Fold, and I'm-not-crazy,' she was already starting to trust him.

She had to wonder, as she fell into a fitful sleep, if self-destruction was a committable offense.

Because if so? Then maybe Sakura deserved to be in this madhouse, after all.

* * *

**note..** holla.

phils are currently winning against san francisco. this never made sense to me, how they always perform better when they play a really good team; they get spanked 14 to 2 by miami, aka the worst team in fucking baseball, they're practically little leaguing that shit, but put them up against the defending champions and suddenly they remember how to hit. smDh.

anyway. get at me, y'all. love you!

xoxo daisy :)


	5. Chapter 5

Itachi took one look at him and his lip curled.

"You look like hell," he stated flatly.

"Fuck you," Sasuke muttered, even knowing that his brother spoke the truth.

It was the first Family Day visitation at OPF, which, for Sasuke, meant his first clandestine rendezvous with his brother.

Their agreement dictated that every two weeks, or as frequently as Sasuke could manage it, information would be funneled to the police station, where Itachi was in charge of the undercover operation. If no evidence could be found to corroborate the Uchiha brothers' suspicions – that Dr. Orochimaru and his staff were running a corrupt operation, and that Juugo's suicide was suspect – then Sasuke would be pulled from the program immediately and returned to civilian life.

"Have you been taking your medication?" asked Itachi carefully, his gunmetal gray eyes boring into his younger brother's. It was an innocent enough question to anybody who could be listening in, since medication was standard issue to each patient in the facility. But Sasuke easily read underneath the underneath: his brother did not want him taking the medications Dr. Orochimaru and Dr. Kabuto prescribed to him.

"Every day," Sasuke returned, and Itachi shook his head.

The decision to take the pills he was given twice in the morning and twice at night was both impulsive and desperate. It wasn't as if he had much choice in the matter, since one of the orderlies was always on hand to make sure he actually swallowed the pills. He'd been threatened more than once with incarceration in the isolation ward if he refused, which simply couldn't happen, given that the only reason he was here was to spy on the operation.

He also wanted to feel for himself what Juugo had gone through in his final weeks, as a sort of morbid homage to his dead friend. What better way to test the safety and function of the pills the doctors were distributing to the patients than to take them himself?

The side effects weren't terrible, but they were definitely annoying. The drugs, he was told by Dr. Kabuto at their therapy sessions, were meant to corral his temper and quell his anxiety. Sasuke didn't notice a change in temperament besides a strange and inconvenient lethargy that made him sluggish and irritable. His appetite was down – not that he wanted to eat the cardboard-tasting instant meals they were fed anyway – and it was getting harder and harder to concentrate on the simplest tasks.

He suspected that the longer he took the unknown medication, the worse his symptoms would become. (The four patients who'd been housed in RW longer than he had – Naruto, Ino, Sai, and Hinata – were evidence of that.) But he also hoped that he would have the proof needed to shut down the facility once and for all, before he became another drugged-up drone like the others.

"Do you need me to get you out of here?" Itachi asked, his voice low.

Itachi was one of the most capable men Sasuke had ever met in his life. Itachi had taken care of him his entire life, even after their parents' death, ensured that he stayed in school, made good grades, kept off the streets and became a successful person. All this, he'd done while maintaining a job at the police station as one of their most competent officers. At 22, Itachi was a heavily-favored candidate for police chief, if Director Sarutobi ever decided to retire in his old age.

Sasuke had no doubts that if he gave Itachi the go-ahead, he'd be out of OPF and back in their city apartment by the end of the night.

As tempting as the thought was, he knew his mission was incomplete. All his hard work over the last two weeks would have been completely in vain, if he gave up now.

Sasuke just shook his head, and tried to focus on the importance of this conversation. He wouldn't be allowed to see Itachi for another two weeks, which left him very limited time to feed him inside information.

The room they were in was very small, very white, very sterile, like the rest of the ward. They had complete privacy, with the obvious exception of the enormous camera pointed directly at the table they were seated at. For safety purposes, the orderlies said.

"Everything we do here is monitored," Sasuke complained, trying to sound like an angsty teenager, while communicating the significant trouble the Restricted Ward faced with its constant surveillance. "They don't ever leave us the fuck alone. And they keep us cordoned off from the rest of the facility, like we're fucking zoo animals or some shit."

Itachi didn't move a muscle, but Sasuke knew he was soaking all of this in like a sponge, ready to communicate it to his peers at the police station. The news that he and the other five inhabitants of RW were isolated from the other patients – treated as more dangerous – was likely shocking to Itachi, who hadn't bargained on that wrench in their scheme.

"Have you made any friends?" Itachi asked after a few moments' careful calculation. He wanted to know about the other patients, then.

"Naruto's my roommate," Sasuke said, drumming his fingers on the table. "He's a pain in the ass but he's okay. Sakura's the girl I hang out with most, though. Few others, too. They don't seem crazy but they keep the six of us locked up together like we're threats to society. It's fuckin bullshit."

This part, at least, was pure truth. Sasuke hoped Dr. Orochimaru was listening.

"What do you mean, they don't seem crazy? Sasuke they wouldn't be treated here if there was nothing seriously wrong with them."

"Sakura's supposed to have PTSD. Shit from her past, and whatever. Doesn't mean she gets thrown in the psych ward. Especially not the _Restricted Ward._"

"I'm sure Dr. Orochimaru has his reasons," Itachi said neutrally, but Sasuke knew he was going to do some serious research on Sakura the second he left.

"Excuse me, Sasuke, Detective Uchiha," a pleasant voice sang from the hallway; it was Kin, the receptionist Sasuke couldn't stand. She peeked inside the room with a saccharine smile. "But visiting hours are over, so if you wouldn't mind wrapping it up and we can get Sasuke here put to bed!"

Itachi nodded sternly and rose from his seat, waiting for Sasuke to stand as well. It was annoying, the way his body wouldn't move his quickly as his brain commanded it to. It seemed to take him longer to get to his feet than it should have.

"Well, I'll be on my way, then, Sasuke," said Itachi, pulling his brother into a hug. Once they were close enough, he murmured quickly, almost inaudibly in his ear, "What're your friends last names, I'll run them through the database, see if anything comes up."

"Uzumaki," Sasuke murmured back, hiding his mouth by returning Itachi's hug. "And Haruno. Sakura Haruno."

"I'll be in touch as soon as possible," Itachi muttered, before drawing back and clapping Sasuke on the back. "Take care of yourself, kid. Follow the doctor's orders."

Not for the first time in his life, Itachi's words were a direct contradiction to his true feelings.

* * *

"How'd it go?" Sakura asked later that night, eyes guarded as she took her usual seat across from him at the cards table.

He sat down and shrugged, pinching the bridge of his nose to fight a headache.

"He doesn't want me here," he returned honestly. "My brother. You?"

Sakura's slim shoulders stiffened, before she smiled sadly and shuffled the bent playing cards with fragile-looking hands. "No family, remember? Nobody came for me today."

Over the past two weeks, Sasuke had formed the closest bonds with Naruto, his roommate, and Sakura, the newest addition to the Restricted Ward. He'd begrudgingly befriended Naruto out of necessity, requiring a major leak into the inner workings of the ward, but Sakura, he tolerated mostly because she seemed to be the only one in the ward who hadn't totally resigned herself to being there. He didn't know much about her yet, but he'd seen, in snippets and peeks, a girl who was used to taking care of herself, and standing on her own two feet.

Part of him respected that, and while he didn't really need her as a friend – she knew about as much about OPF as he did, so she wasn't a great leak – he'd spent more time with her than anyone else since he'd been here.

He knew, from their brief, shallow conversations that Sakura's birth parents were dead, and that she'd lived with a foster family up until last year. Then he'd heard rumors from Dr. Yakushi and the orderlies that she'd gotten into some trouble with the law afterwards, but the sweet, shy girl he'd gotten to know lately didn't seem to fit the profile of a hardened criminal.

She provoked his curiosity in more ways than one.

"What about your foster family?" he asked, selecting his words carefully as she began to deal.

It was interesting to him, the way her entire demeanor changed completely; she'd gone from sweet and friendly to cold and forbidding in the span of a second. Glaciers forced sharp and jagged in stormy green eyes, and when she spoke again, her tone was polite but lacked any semblance of the warmth he'd come to associate with her.

"I don't have one," she replied coolly. She dealt them each a hand of five to play some poker and placed the deck in the center of the table between them.

_Might as well be a wall,_ he thought, eyeing it for a moment before returning his gaze to her.

Poker was starting to get redundant, but it wasn't like they had much else to do.

"If you didn't have one, you wouldn't be here. What do they do, hit you?"

He wasn't sure why he was pushing the subject, but there simply wasn't anything else to _do._ And he couldn't explain it, but he didn't like spending so much time with somebody – he'd venture to call them friends – without knowing their whole story.

And Sakura kept a lot of secrets behind her pretty eyes. That much, he knew.

From over his hand of wrinkled playing cards, he watched a shadow descend over her face; her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed forbiddingly. His prodding did not please her.

"Any reason you're pushing me on this?" she asked coldly, selecting from the draw pile. "No offense Sasuke but it's not really your style to make casual chitchat."

"That what you think this is?" He was smirking. "Talking about your foster family…"

"They're _not_ my family," she snarled.

"…so they did hit you, then."

"You wouldn't begin to know the half of what I've been through." Her voice was chilling, and he was wrong-footed by the jut of her jaw. She tossed the cards on the table between them and stood sharply, the drag of the chair legs jerking on the carpet and drawing everyone else's attention.

"So don't bother trying to find out," she finished.

* * *

Sasuke knew it was, essentially, a complete waste of time attempting to learn much more about Sakura. He wasn't here to make friends, he was here to collect information and get the hell out. That was why he bothered speaking to his odd roommate, why he didn't fight back when provoked by the orderlies, why he was taking an unknown medication despite the incredible stupidity that doing something like that required.

Befriending Sakura Haruno had absolutely no place on his list.

But as he lay in bed that night after lockdown, drowsier than usual thanks to whatever pills he'd been ingesting, his thoughts continued to return to her.

She was distracting. Mysterious and difficult to figure out, with a very ugly past hidden behind a very pretty face. In a hellhole like OPF, he had to admit it was refreshing to engage with someone who hadn't utterly resigned herself to her odious environment.

_That's all,_ he thought, frustrated with himself for dwelling on thoughts of some worthless girl when he _should_ be concentrating on his assignment. _That's all she is, the least of all evils. If I had no one to talk to here but Naruto, I'd go crazy for real._

But knowing the impracticality of spending so much thought on someone he would never have spoken to outside of these walls couldn't chase those thoughts away.

If he was being honest with himself, he wanted to figure her out.

_What's a girl like that doing dropping out of high school?_ he thought. _Stripping, even? She's smart. Too smart for that, so there's gotta be something else going on. Something she doesn't want anybody else to know._

And that made everything all the more tempting for him. She was a challenge.

_Fuck me,_ he thought with a groan, rolling over on his uncomfortable cot for the sixteenth time.

"You okay, dude?" came a groggy voice from across the room. Sasuke stiffened and realized his constant writhing must have woken Naruto.

"Aa," he mumbled, mood thoroughly soured by his abrupt meeting with Itachi and his constant dwelling on Sakura. He was in absolutely no frame of mind to speak to Naruto at the moment.

"My uncle came today," Naruto went on, apparently pleased that Sasuke was awake. "He's this real famous porn novelist. I think his writing's shit, but everybody else seems to really like it."

"…"

"Was that your brother I saw come in? He looks like you a lot."

"…"

"And did you see that guy that came in for Sakura? Was it her dad maybe?"

Sasuke froze and sat up, frowning. _She told me she didn't have any visitors today…_

"He was scary as hell," Naruto went on, oblivious to Sasuke's sudden attentiveness. He was lying on his back, arms folded behind his bed, a bit groggy from sleep but more lucid than he'd been a few days prior, after a suspiciously large dose of his morning meds.

"What do you mean," Sasuke asked reluctantly, his desire to puzzle out Sakura prevailing over his dislike of engaging Naruto in conversation.

"Big dude," Naruto explained. "He was asking for Sakura but she told the orderlies she didn't want to see him. I saw him in the waiting area yelling for her to come out and face him. I don't know if they made her or not, they took me into the one room to meet with Uncle Jiraiya. Did you talk to her at all?"

_Yeah,_ thought Sasuke, angry all of a sudden. _And she lied right to my face._

He knew he had absolutely no right to demand marrow-deep honesty from Sakura when he was lying to her – and everyone – right back, but the knowledge that she'd looked right in his eyes and told him, flat out, that she'd had no visitors when that simply wasn't true?

It pissed him off, right to his core.

Ignoring whatever else Naruto was trying to tell him, he reflected back on his brief, but hopefully successful, meeting with his brother. He would have liked more time to talk, but he would simply have to trust that Itachi could do something with what little he'd been able to pass onto him. Not to mention, the fact that he'd leaked Sakura's name to him in an attempt to learn more about her.

_Whatever secrets you're still hiding,_ he thought, eyes narrowed at the direct challenge she'd issued with her dishonesty, _I'm GOING to find out._ And if he couldn't on his own, inside here, then Itachi certainly could.

"…you sleeping, dude?"

Sasuke didn't answer.

* * *

**note..** thanks for your patience, babies. i appreciate it.

phillies are playing like garbage. i might kill off everybody. haven't decided yet.

xoxo daisy


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